Product Consultant

Product Owner Practice Lead (Contract)

Type: Contract, about full-time
Length: 3 months, with an option to extend to 6
Start: October 26, 2026
Reports to: SVP, Product Strategy
Location: Remote, U.S.

Help us build a Product Owner practice from the ground up. You’ll define the role, help choose and coach our first Product Owners, bring objective-driven planning to our quarters and sprints, train our Product and Engineering organizations to work with POs, and lead by example on live product backlogs. You’ll start with our VXconnect platform, then extend the practice to VXretail and VXcis.

About the Role

VertexOne is strengthening how our Agile Scrum and Kanban teams plan and deliver, including quarterly planning across teams. We have deep product and domain expertise across our teams. What we need now is the Product Owner skillset: clear backlog ownership, value-based prioritization, sprint-ready work, and planning driven by clear objectives rather than lists of tasks.

As our Product Owner Practice Lead, you’ll design how the PO role works here, help us find the right people for it, and train them and the teams around them. You’ll do the work first-hand on our live backlogs, so the standard you set is one you’ve already met.

What You’ll Achieve

Phase 1 (first 13 weeks): Stand up the practice on VXconnect

• Define the PO role: a role charter, decision rights, and a RACI covering Product Management, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Engineering, and Client Success.
• Set standards for Definition of Ready, story writing, backlog structure, and a single intake path for requests.
• Triage and rank the current backlog by business value, and set up Classes of Service and WIP limits for the kanban team.
• Help break a current pool of about 20 developers and QA engineers into cross-functional scrum teams, each aligned to a Product Owner.
• Get two scrum teams to at least two sprints of Ready stories.
• Introduce objective-driven planning: measurable quarterly objectives, and sprint goals that tie directly to them.
• Train the broader Product and Engineering organizations on how to work with Product Owners: who decides what, how requests flow, and what to expect in refinement, planning, and reviews.
• Build the PO competency scorecard and help select two Product Owners.
• Train and coach the new POs until they run refinement, planning, and triage on their own.

Phase 2 (next 13 weeks, optional): Extend to VXretail and VXcis, and make it last

• Assess how each product’s backlogs, teams, and intake work today.
• Adapt the charter, RACI, and standards to each product.
• Help identify, place, and train Product Owners for each product.
• Bring each team’s backlog to at least two sprints of Ready stories, with objective-driven quarterly and sprint planning in place.
• Extend Product and Engineering training on working with POs to each product’s teams.
• Publish a reusable PO playbook and launch a PO community of practice with an internal owner.
• Deliver a final readout on outcomes and recommendations.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years as a hands-on Product Owner, owning backlogs for multiple Scrum and Kanban teams.
• You’ve set up or turned around a PO practice in an organization that didn’t have one, including defining roles and coaching new POs.
• Strong with value-based prioritization (WSJF, cost of delay) and with keeping backlogs ready.
• Deep, hands-on experience with Agile Scrum and Kanban, including quarterly planning across multiple teams.
• You’ve run objective-driven planning, setting measurable quarterly objectives and sprint goals tied to business outcomes.
• You’ve designed and delivered training for Product and Engineering teams, and you can coach peers and earn credibility with senior leaders.
• Fluent in Jira.

Preferred Qualifications

• Agile Product Owner certification.
• A coaching or training certification.
• B2B SaaS experience, especially with customer implementations.

Experience with utility or energy software is not required. Our product managers and business analysts bring the domain depth; we’re hiring for Product Owner skill.

About VertexOne

VertexOne provides cloud software for utilities and energy retailers, including customer information, billing, and customer engagement solutions.

How to Apply

Apply with your resume and a short note on a Product Owner practice you’ve built or turned around: what you started with, what you changed, and what was different when you left.

VertexOne is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.